Icecream
By onemorething
- 4987 reads
When I was thirteen, I disappeared. There was no event that immediately preceded it, though I had a long list of reasons to clear out. I packed a small rucksack with a few items of clothing and my copy of The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll. It was a heavy book with a deep red dust cover. It was a cumbersome object for a runaway, especially when I had no real intention of reading it, it was just that I couldn't leave it behind. I left at lunchtime. I caught a bus to P, a seaside town, which was only five miles or so from where I lived. I think I had planned to take each step of my escape in small, manageable stages. P was a town entirely founded on a very British sort of tourism; of arcades, netted buckets and spades, big-breasted postcards and jelly sandals. I walked the seafront, lined with chalky rows of B&Bs like teeth. It was summer and not easy to find one with a vacancy sign, but eventually I did. And here was where my subterfuge began. I was 18. I was on holiday, but awaiting family to join me and needed a room for a couple of nights at most. I paid for a small single room with a turquoise bedspread and a tv in the corner. That was good, I had thought, I won't miss Eastenders.
I left my rucksack with its brick of a book and walked back into the town centre. I wandered past the throng of arcades, their noise spilled onto pavement, the fudge shops, and those shops where you could buy crab lines and ashtrays and bags of shells (never found on this town's pebbled beach) as if I really was a tourist. I went to Marks and Spencer's to buy a sandwich and salt and vinegar crisps - I planned to save these to eat watching Eastenders later. And then, I think a kind of lostness set in. Because I wasn't a tourist. This was a grim place of sunburn and seagulls and I knew it too well to stroll around it as though it was interesting. I started to head back to the B&B. On the way, I decided I would get an icecream. And this is the bit I haven't mentioned yet. From asking for my fare on the bus to booking into the B&B and this very moment, I had spoken with an American accent. The lady in the ice cream parlour asked where I was from. "Dallas," I said. I was here on a trip to England, I told her. I don't recall if there was more conversation than that.
When I returned to the B&B I went up to my room and sat on the bed. It was still mid-afternoon. I wish I could remember now what thoughts I had then, what I had intended, how frightened I was. I know that they were broken by the landlady knocking on my door to find the police were waiting for me downstairs. She hadn't believed that I was 18 and, concerned, had called the police. I have no clear memory of what they asked me, perhaps because I was too terrified at the time. They took me home. It was still light. They must have spoken to my parents, I suppose, though I had not been reported missing. No one asked me about it. No one made any mention of it at all. It was as though it hadn't even happened. As though in barely existing, I had already vanished. I have told this story before as if it was an amusing thing I did as a teenager, as well as the fact that the landlady didn't give me my money back. I have always left out the part that I pretended to be from Dallas and that it was an ignored event when I arrived home. It doesn't seem so funny anymore. Because it is the icecream that I remember most clearly, the conversation in my absurd accent - my sense of wanting to be anyone, but me - a childish attempt at reinvention.
Image is from here: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marsden_Hartley_-_Movement_No._6,_Provincetown_-_ASC.2012.65_-_Crystal_Bridges_Museum_of_American_Art.jpg
- Log in to post comments
Comments
I imagine it was the
I imagine it was the subliminal influence of the Works of Lewis Carroll taking you down your very own rabbit hole. The brain likes to remember absurd things; the stranger the better. I am glad that you appeared again. Reinvention isn't childish - we all love to be someone else at times. Enjoyed your tale from childhood notwithstanding the nature of disclosure.
- Log in to post comments
What a sad, brave story
What a sad, brave story Rachel. To leave home at thirteen, It's almost like a part of life that's vivid and yet so distant.
Hope there's more to come.
Jenny.
- Log in to post comments
I wish you would venture into
I wish you would venture into prose more often - I think the pitch was just right - as you say - not a funny story at all. Well done for managing to do it properly in the end - 17 is still quite young!
- Log in to post comments
This is our Story of the Week
This is our Story of the Week - Congratulations!
It's also our Facebook and Twitter Pick of the Day
Please share/retweet if you enjoyed it as much as I did
- Log in to post comments
Excellent. It's those little
Excellent. It's those little touches that make it - Lewis Carroll. The Dallas accent.
- Log in to post comments
Wow. I'm with Claudine on
Wow. I'm with Claudine on this. Pitch perfect. Sa sad and so well written. Those details. Loved it.
Rich
- Log in to post comments
I'm glad you posted it too,
I'm glad you posted it too, and I'm glad you only waited 4 more years to make it away for good :0)
I ran away about then, too. I didn't have the money or capability to do it like you, though, so as someone at school had been urging me to leave for ages, and had said I could stay with their family, I thought I would go to her house. I packed some clothes and toothbrush etc in a plastic bag, and the small amount of money I had. It was winter, about some time after six, frosty and dark, there are few houses down the road where she lived. Her house was big with a big front garden. I waited for ages in the road looking at it, then went and rang the bell on her huge front door. No one answered. I tried a few more times, then I went home. No one had noticed. My Mum laughed. So I understand :0) And am full of amazement and admiration that you got so far!
- Log in to post comments
I wandered off a few times
I wandered off a few times too, it''s always good to remember. The American accent makes it special. It doesn't show what you were thinking, but it does show what you were thinking moment.
- Log in to post comments
A lovely read. The
A lovely read. The reinvention thing is really interesting. I had a really bad stammer when I was younger, so I often used foreign accents when talking to strangers because then I was totally fluent. It got a bit awkward when two of the strangers turned out not to be strangers to each other!
I echo what others have said - it would be marvellous to see more prose from you.
- Log in to post comments
There's a whole story going
There's a whole story going on underneath which gives it the tone of sadness (obviously touched on at the end). Thanks for posting -- I've wondered what your prose work might be like and it's excellent. Thanks for sharing.
This is one of my favourite stories about kids running away: https://www.irishpost.com/news/the-story-of-the-dublin-boys-who-ran-away...
- Log in to post comments
That is NOT a dull story. I
That is NOT a dull story. I enjoyed it so much and would love to read more. The sense of adventure, the loneliness of a seaside town and your will to escape and survive makes for an absorbing read. Those land ladies who run the B & B's are often the ones to raise the alarm in all sorts of risky circumstances.
- Log in to post comments
This is our Story of the
This is our Story of the Month - Congratulations!
- Log in to post comments
Congrats on POM honors,
Congrats on POM honors, Rachel. It was a favorite of mine.
Rich
- Log in to post comments
Good story
Although I suspect your American accent wasn't convincing.
- Log in to post comments
OMT, you should write more
OMT, you should write more prose; this is a sublime story, the more so that it is part of you.
- Log in to post comments